Dude, Where’s My Van?

Chapter 2: Real Deal Holyfield

Last time, we explored the emergence of artists who sought to harness the power of revolution.

The revolutions of late 18th century America and France were the central inspirations for the Romantics and other bohemian artists of the time.

But unlike America’s overthrow of English rule, France’s revolution led to an extended period of political instability, including several other revolutionary uprisings throughout the 19th century. Sure, the ideal of revolution was swift and drastic action for the sake of beautiful progress, yet the reality was often less clear cut, more ambiguous, and a good deal uglier than the artists and poets were willing to admit.

Fittingly, the next wave of Bohemians to take their art into radical new directions would bring a revolution that is not self-evidently revolutionary to us. More like a slight detour on our forward march toward modernism.

I am talking, of course, about the Realist movement.

Rather than build on the bombast of the Romantics, this movement gave us art that was less idealized, more modest, more ambiguous, and a bit uglier than what came before. 

Make no mistake, though: this movement was a radical innovation in art, and was considered quite subversive for its time. Realist paintings tended not to shock the conservatives of the day, but instead to confound them, and make them suspicious of the artists’ intentions.

Surely some suspicion was warranted, as these were very tense times.

This uprising sparked similar revolutions in Ireland, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Poland, and Hungary, among other nations. Europe was a powder keg, and there were plenty of radicals hoping to provide the necessary spark. 

Courbet used this great privilege to submit what are now considered to be the foundational pieces of Realist art.

As expected, his submissions caused a stir.

There was this one:

And this one:

And this one:

What exactly was the artist trying to convey with these gargantuan-sized paintings centered on the everyday lives of peasants and common people? On humdrum moments, quiet melancholy, or scenes of hard labor?? Why paint subjects in poses that seemed unflattering to them? Why focus on people who were plain, coarse, sometimes even ugly, rather than exalt that which is beautiful and noble and inspiring?

Courbet’s talents as a painter could not be denied, but to many his pieces were inscrutable at best. At worst, they were subversive working class agit-prop, more sparks to start another fire.

Admittedly, those paranoid takes weren’t completely wrong about Courbet the man, or his Realist compatriots. They were indeed self-styled radicals with political revolution on the brain. But a big part of what made their Realist paintings so revolutionary was not their nature as didactic agit-prop. If anything, it was its relative lack of any didactic intention that made it so radically different from what came before.

Instead, they were trying to capture the world as they saw it. No frills, no ideals, no imaginative embellishments, no life lessons supposedly drawn from history. Just individual attempts to capture life at a given moment in time.

“Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things. It is a completely physical language, the words of which consist of all visible objects,” Courbet later stated in his Realist Manifesto.

“An object which is abstract, not visible, non-existent, is not within the realm of painting.

Imagination in art consists in knowing how to find the most complete expression of an existing thing, but never in inventing or creating that thing itself.”

Gustave Courbet

Art for the Realists consisted of snapshots of the world around them. The fantastical imagination and heightened ideals of the Romantics meant nothing to them.

“Beauty, like truth, is a thing which is relative to the time in which one lives and to the individual capable of understanding it.

The expression of the beautiful bears a precise relation to the power of perception acquired by the artist.”

Gustave Courbet

This was a thoroughly modern way of conceptualizing art; one that reflected the growing independence of artists from the wealthy patrons who had historically supported the craft. Beyond those socio-economic considerations, it was an approach that was in many ways akin to a nascent technology of the time, one that grew and matured throughout the 19th century: photography.

Realist painters only sometimes cared about presenting photo-realistic images in their works. Courbet himself sought to create something like a physical sculpture onto his flat canvases, emphasizing texture and convexity with his oil application as well as color and scene layout. Other painters employed dreamier or sketchier renditions of their scenes, but overall the scenes were visual snapshots of the artists’ experiences and observations.

Edgar Degas is popularly considered to be an Impressionist painter, but he himself considered his work to be Realist. I’d say his work is the perfection of the Realist ethos.

Perhaps due to the growing popularity and improved precision of photographic images, painters eventually began to shift away from painstakingly photo-realistic content, and instead began to develop more obviously stylized images.

Given the central importance of contemporary documentation to the Realist movement, it’s ironic that contemporary documentation served as evidence against the movement’s founder, to his great misfortune. In 1871, in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, the French National Guard seized control of the nation and formed a left-wing group called the Paris Commune, which presided over the affairs of the nation for ten weeks before the French Army defeated them and restored the power of the Third Republic.

Courbet was part of this Paris Commune, and among other proposals for future plans he called for a certain public monument to be taken down and replaced: the Place Vendome Column.

Once the Paris Commune was taken out of power, this evidence was later used to declare Courbet responsible for the damage done.

Yet, his legacy lives on:

Not least because of the wealth of masterfully painted snapshots of his life and times that he left behind.

In his wake, many more artists would try their hands at slice-of-life documents of their surroundings or their lives, while others would build on his committed individualism, leading to the public puzzling more and more about what the heck a given piece was supposed to mean. For better and worse, the mentality of “It’s art because I say it is” starts here. 

If you’re inclined to think of that later work as bratty and indulgent, consider a possible alternative:

After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Communist Party rose to power in Russia.

With Courbet’s Realism, as with its later descendants in modern art, the ambiguity can certainly be puzzling. Yet from that ambiguity there is the freedom of nuance, complexity, discourse, and the ability to question.

That’s an approach that gives reality its due respect. Let’s never take such modes of active cultural engagement for granted…

…because we never know what our contemporary snapshots may look like in the decades to come…

…to be continued…

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